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Wifredo Lam synthesized European modernism and visual references to African diasporic culture in what the artist termed an “act of decolonization.” The in-between quality of his figures—neither animal nor human—suggests the nuances of Lam’s own personal and artistic identity. The Cuban-born son of a Chinese immigrant and a mother with Congolese and Cuban ancestry, Lam studied academic painting in Europe and befriended Pablo Picasso and André Breton in Paris. Returning to Cuba in 1941 after the Nazi occupation of Paris, Lam discovered a growing “Afro-Cubanismo” movement, celebrating the African heritage of many Cubans still marginalized by the legacies of colonialism and slavery.

In response, Lam’s work featured metamorphosing, hybrid, and androgynous figures, with references to African diasporic traditions (including his grandmother’s practice of Santería), and Cuba’s tropical landscape. By embedding these ideas within a visual vocabulary informed by both Cubism and Surrealism, Lam wrote, “I could act as a Trojan horse that would spew forth hallucinating images with the power to surprise, to disturb the dreams of the exploiters.”